Chickens

By Zander Dorler

The Blackberry farm was a serene place with neatly kept fences and a large windmill standing as a nice landmark. Days were quiet except for a few snorts from the pigpen. But this day was an exception in the chicken pen, the day before Thanksgiving.

“Listen to me!” Ms. Cluckerson said with great anxiousness. “They are fattening us up, they are going to kill us and eat us.”

“Your crazy theories always make me laugh,” said Pickle-Strip while eating from the seeds and nuts on the ground. She thought Cluckerson was trying to be funny because there was no way the humans would hurt beautiful chickens like themselves. But Cluckerson was becoming quite bony from not eating and constant stress.

“The food will make you..’ Cluckerson was trying to think of something to convince her that she was right.

“What was that?” Pickle-Strip asked, full of confusion about what Cluckerson was telling her.

“The food will make you ugly, yeah it will make you ugly,” Cluckerson burst out thinking her answer was sure to convince her to stop eating. Pickle-Strip took great pride in her vanity.

“That is silly.” Pickle-Strip said. “How could food do that?” Cluckerson did not have an answer for that so she walked away thinking of other ways to convince her because if she convinced Pickle-Strip, everyone would agree. Everyone believed that whatever Pickle-Strip did was cool. And if every chicken believed and they all survived the human attack, Cluckerson would be a hero. All she ever wanted was to be liked.

Later that night she saw some chickens from three pens over being taken and was very alarmed. “Wake up! Wake up everyone! They are coming to eat us now!” Cluckerson shouted. By the time anyone woke up and looked, the people were already gone. “They were just here, they were. I saw them!” No one believed her.

The next day, a bus of school children came to visit Blackberry Farm on a field trip. Cluckerson thought this was the end for every chicken and that the humans would feed them to the children. She ran around saying, “It is the end!” It was, but only for her. All the beautiful chickens were brought to the petting zoo but Cluckerson, having nearly starved herself, was the ugliest chicken so no child would want to see her in the petting zoo. She was killed and eaten by the farmers for a very tasty light meal.

Zander does not write often, but enjoys writing when he does. He has three cats and loves each of them very much. He lives in a nice town in Texas with his mom.